MISFITS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Great Balls Of Fire

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 10-11, 13-15 and 18-23, and 2 more places -- 31.1% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

TEMPO
166 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
74
LENGTH
1:47
DIFFICULTY
56/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 166 BPM
GREAT BALLS OF FIRE · BAR 10

It is played on ride, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 49 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is how many notes a second it asks for.

The whole song is 56 out of 100, so the beat is most of what the song asks for. Get it clean and the rest follows.

How to get it under your hands

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 125 BPM, and adds the notes back a rung at a time -- 3 of them. Nothing is a matter of opinion: each rung has a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next one.

  1. Skeleton. Only the notes that land on a beat. The point is to feel where this bar stands.
  2. Kick and snare, whole. The feet and the snare exactly as written, ride pulled back to quarter notes. This is the part to know by heart.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 125, 145 and 166 BPM, and the gate at each one is 8 loops in a row with no wrong note and no wobble in the time.

PRACTISE THIS BEAT →

Questions

What drum beat does Great Balls Of Fire use?

A one-bar groove on ride, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 166 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 31.1% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 10-11, 13-15, 18-23 and 30-35, and 1 more place. The time is kept on the snare to start with, and it changes 11 times over the song.

Is the beat in Great Balls Of Fire hard?

49 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 56 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 74 BARS ANALYSED